Elective local government officials will have better opportunities to accomplish their broader and significant programs, ensure their lasting positive effects and benefits for their constituents, should their terms be extended beyond the three-year limit.
Philippine Councilors’ League Bicol Regional chairman Jesciel Richard Salceda, now currently campaigning for the league’s national chairmanship, said in a statement he would push for a five-year term for provincial governors down to barangay captains, as well as congressmen, through constitutional reforms, if he becomes PCL national chairman.
Salceda said the three-year term of local officials limit their efforts and momentum to serve their constituents to the best of their ability, due to disruptions elections bring every three years.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government supports the “extension of terms of local officials, which could be achieved through Charter change that can be ratified during the 2022 presidential elections.”
He said the proposal to extend the term of local officials, to four or five years, with two successive reelections, has gained widespread support, and that well-meaning local government officials are forced to plan, implement and rush a three-year agenda so they will have something to present to voters when they seek reelection.
A three-term councilor of Polangui, Albay and their local league’s representative to the Albay Provincial Board, Salceda said he will also work out measures to help make the Supreme Court’s Mandanas
Ruling a law or enshrined in the Charter to ensure LGUs continue to receive their “just” internal revenue allotment share.
Salceda is pushing for the constitutionalization of the Mandanas ruling, which will increase the IRA base to P354 billion in 2022, P382 billion in 2023, P420 billion in 2024, and P466 billion in 2025. He stressed that IRA sharing between the national government and LGUs has to be “finally put into law or institutionalized, something LGUs ardently need for their economic empowerment.”
A graduate of Yale University, Salceda is a nephew of Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, House Ways and Means Committee chairman.
His reform advocacies have won strong support and endorsements from PCL’s 17,000 members and leaders, following his campaign tour and meetings with league leaders in key provinces.
Aside from term extension for local officials and institutionalization of Mandanas Ruling, should he become PCL national chairman, Salceda said his agenda also include PCL’s involvement in crafting constiutional amendments, representation in Regional Development Councils, and measures pushing LGU initiatives on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and local economic development.
“It is high time the league’s strength and role in nation-building be utilized to attain the country’s desired inclusive economic growth, and for local legislators to exercise their role as modernizing agents of society in pushing for constitutional change that fortifies the role of LGUS in pursuing local economic development,” he stressed.
Salceda also said he will work for a financially strong and stable PCL “We should build the PCL as a fiscally sustainable institution that would be an instrument of communities in prompting positive changes in the lives of ordinary people and as a reliable partner of the national government,” he added.